When is Populism Acceptable? The Involvement of Intellectuals in the Bulgarian Summer Protests in 2013

Populism is frequently understood as democratic illiberalism. Concrete policies that have been implemented by governing populist parties in Bulgaria, however, have been surprisingly liberal, at least in economic terms. This poses the question whether it is possible to have the opposite of democratic illiberalism, namely, liberal populism. This article investigates the elective affinities between liberal and populist discourses during the Bulgarian Summer protests in 2013. This investigation is done with a strong focus on intellectuals' interpretations as their function is not merely reflective description, but is also formative and prescriptive of political identities. The main argument is that throughout the 2013 Summer protests there was visible tendency of articulation between populist and liberal discourses. They were populist both in the sense of “soft” populism, that is compatible with liberalism, as well as “exclusionary” of ethnic minorities and socially marginalized groups. The Summer protests constructed an identity of a minoritarian subaltern elite, united by its opposition to figures of oligarchic elites, ethnic minorities and illiberal majorities.

Georgi Medarov

Georgi Medarov


    Georgi Medarov is PhD candidate in Sociology in the University of Sofia. He teaches Historical Sociology in the University of Plovdiv. Georgi is also the scientific secretary of the Institute for Critical Theories of Supermodernity, based in Sofia, and has been working as a researcher for the environmentalist association “Za Zemiata”, the Bulgarian member of Friends of the Earth network.



    1. Is there a need for rigorous and non-essentialist (discursive) theory of populism?
    2. What is the relationship between protests and populism?
    3. What is the relationship between the liberal consensus and populism?
    4. What typologies of populism exists? What are the differences between "soft" and "hard" populism, as well as between "exclusionary" and "inclusionary" populism?
    5. Both populism and anti-populism rely on a formal discursive structure that pins "the people" against "the elite". How are they different?

    Dawson, James, Hanley, S. 2016. The Fading Mirage of the "Liberal Consensus". Journal of Democracy, 27(1), 20-34.
    Krastev, Ivan. 2016. Liberalism's Failure to Deliver. Journal of Democracy, 27(1), 35-38.
    Kofti, Dimitra. 2014. Abstention from the Bulgarian Protests: Indebted Workers and Declining Market Teleology. FocaalBlog, http://www.focaalblog.com/2014/11/05/dimitra-kofti-abstention-from-the-bulgarian-protests-indebted-workers-and-declining-market-teleology/.
    Stavrakakis, Yannis. 2014. The Return of “the People”: Populism and Anti-Populism in the Shadow of the European Crisis. Constellations 21(4), 505-517.
    Tsoneva, Jana. 2014. Communism is Wrong. Crisis and Critique, 1(1), 238-262

    Articles

    Contemporary
    Southeastern Europe

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